Housing market still sees clouds

Updated 2017-04-06 09:31:02Shanghai Daily

Cloudy sentiment hovered over Shanghai's housing market in March despite the sector posting a month-on-month rebound, an industry report said.

The area of new homes sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, soared 104.5 percent from February to 742,400 square meters last month, Shanghai Homelink Real Estate Agency Co said in the report.

But the growth marked a drop of 66.5 percent from the same month a year ago and was also the lowest March figure in five years, according to Homelink data.

Meanwhile, 12 housing projects totaling 361,000 square meters were released locally last month, up 26.1 percent from February but a year-on-year decline of 58.5 percent.

“Last month's rebound in sales and supply was mainly due to seasonal factors while overall market sentiment continued to be very slack amid continued tightening policies,” said Zhao Baogen, a Homelink researcher. “We won't see any major improvement until there is a notable recovery in new home supply.”

An apartment project in outlying Jiading District sold 710 units at an average price of 31,210 yuan (,530) per square meter in March.